Wednesday, October 19, 2016

It's always great getting repeat customers. This order came from the same client who bought the "family pack" of guitar straps a year or so ago. They'll be firing up a new game of Eldritch Horror and wanted an appropriate vessel for the die. What else is there to say other than: Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn

Thursday, October 6, 2016

We just concluded this campaign a week or two ago so it's still pretty fresh in our memories. This was my second time DMing (at least with this group) and I think I can say it went much better than that first campaign in Erd. We spent 60 weeks exploring (and generally saving) Vanarda and eventually hit level 20 just before the big, bad boss at the end.

Vanarda was a setting I'd started fitting together a few years ago, around the time we were starting the Erd campaign. It was originally intended to have a heavy steampunk element and to experiment with removing magic from D&D. I soon realized that D&D mechanically requires magic though so concessions had to be made. The course of the campaign was centered around the return of arcane magic to this particular world.

So far as the cartography goes I think this map was a definite improvement over the Erd map but it's still a stepping point. It's got some wonky density problems (I bet you won't have any trouble picking out where the campaign started) and using the colors to indicate terrain turned out to be an unsatisfying workaround. Practical in terms of time, but not as pleasing as drawing in the mountains and trees. Drawing in all those tiny islands was pretty rewarding but oddly the campaign barely touched on that area.

This brings us up to date with our finished campaigns. In the future when we wrap up another campaign I'd love to start a new row and keep racking up maps.

Monday, October 3, 2016

I hadn't heard of this game before but the client plays it pretty frequently with their spouse. Since their anniversary was coming up it made a pretty good theme for a Dice Cup. We also added a pair of trays to hold the game's markers. I figured out as I was packing it up that the trays will even fit together like a little case. That'll be useful to know.